Thursday, May 22, 2014

"The Deceived Belief Must Be Genuine" (more from Greg Bahnsen's doctoral dissertation)

We have maintained
that deceived people believe false propositions, and we have elaborated a basic
characterization of belief. It will turn out on the analysis being developed
here that self-deception actually involves two beliefs which are in
conflict. This will be defended in chapter 4. What can be observed here,
however, is that the conflict that exists within the self-deceiver can be
adequately described as a conflict between two beliefs, and need not be
portrayed as a conflict between knowledge and belief. That is, rather than
saying that the self-deceiver knows one thing and believes contrary to
it, it will be sufficient simply to say that the self-deceiver believes
something and yet believes something contrary to it. The contrary belief
in either case will be false. However, there is no need to maintain that the
other belief to which it is contrary is true and held on good evidence; that
is, there is no need to say that it is knowledge (a true belief held on good
evidence) to which the false belief is contrary in self-deception. What the
self-deceiver takes to be true (i.e., believes) need not actually be
true. What is at issue is not whether the self-deceiver holds a false belief in
conflict with a true one. It is equally appropriate in self-deception that the
conflict be between a false belief and another false belief, for it is the
conflict-state that constitutes the condition for self-deception. As long as
the self-deceiver actually believes a proposition to be true, it can be
objectively false and still serve to set up or generate a conflicting (and
similarly false) belief. Our analysis of self-deception need not become
complicated, then, with a mixture of knowledge and belief. A person can deceive
himself about a belief which he holds whether or not that belief actually has
good supporting reasons and turns out to be true or not. Those are extraneous
matters here. The important thing is that the self-deceiver believe some
proposition and then (falsely) believe something which is incompatible with it.1